Cisco appointed former Confluera CEO John Morgan as its new SVP and GM of Splunk Security.

Morgan joins the networking giant’s security unit, having spent the past year working on a startup operating in stealth mode that was developing governance controls for agentic AI applications.

Prior to his startup efforts, Morgan served as SVP for products at Trellix. A stalwart in the cybersecurity space, Morgan has previously worked for F5, MobileIron, and Nokia, and led Confluera from 2021 until it was acquired by XM Cyber for an undisclosed fee in March 2023.

Commenting on his appointment, Morgan said in a LinkedIn post: “Cisco’s ability to create positive customer outcomes and enable AI adoption through reliable hybrid infrastructure capacity, data analytics, and trust (visibility and cybersecurity) all at massive scale is truly inspiring. I’m looking forward to working with such a great team of colleagues, partners, and customers.”

Morgan joins Cisco’s Splunk brand as it continues to be integrated following its $28 billion acquisition.

The networking giant’s latest earnings report revealed Splunk sales were accelerating toward cloud subscriptions as opposed to on-premises deployments, a shift CEO Chuck Robbins said was “creating a drag on revenue growth, which we expect to continue in the second half of fiscal year [2026].”

Cisco's initial expectation for Splunk deployments was an equal division between cloud and on-premises. However, actual distribution appears to have skewed significantly, resulting in a ratio closer to two-thirds cloud deployments compared to one-third on-premises.

Morgan’s appointment comes as Cisco looks to ensure security is in place across its entire stack. The vendor made a series of security announcements during the recent EMEA leg of its continental Live tour, including the expansion of its AI Defense platform and sprinkling of AI capabilities for Cisco SASE.